Yesterday I wrote 'to be continued....' for addressing the remainder of John 6. There are some amazing core teachings in this portion of John, and I didn't want to shortchange time spent on the lessons to be gleaned.
A significant component to this section of John 6 is Jesus' repeated reaffirmation that He is the Way to God. Verse 40 - everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life. Verse 47 - whoever believes has eternal life.
Of course, the conspicuous focus is on Jesus' repeated declaration and affirmation that He is the Bread of Life. Repetition makes us pay attention! Like the Samaritan woman at Jacob's well, the people are stuck on the temporal. They were just fed bread and fish the day before - and they reminisce about the manna in the desert, but Jesus directs them to the spiritual truth of who He is. He is the bread of life. Eternal life. If they take him into themselves - as if ingesting food - He will give them (and by extension, us) eternal life.
In the original Passover in Egypt, the people took a perfect lamb, killed it, then ate it. Jesus is establishing the parallel here. If they eat His body and drink His blood.... Truly, if they accept Him as the Passover lamb who will die in their place, that just as the blood of the lamb of old when drawn over the doorposts of the Hebrew people's homes saved them from the angel of death that awful night before Pharaoh finally relented and agreed to let the people go, they will be saved to eternal life. The Old Testament is a foreshadowing of what was to come. It is no accident that Jesus' shedding of blood as payment for sin would be at Passover the following year. He was the Passover Lamb. Verse 51 - "...the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh." If we eat his body and drink his blood.... It is a remembrance He will tell His disciples to observe about Him. But - - I'm getting ahead of the story....
But - it was that issue of eating His body and blood that turned a lot of people away. They didn't get the spiritual significance of the annual Passover bread and wine - what we would come to call Communion.
And out of that declaration, many followers turned away. It was just too hard a teaching. And in that moment, Jesus turned to his closest followers - the Twelve - and asked them, "Will you leave me also?" And Simon Peter answered with the answer that echoes from my own heart in times of deepest difficulty, "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life...." Even though what Jesus said was hard to understand, Peter knew that Jesus was the Messiah, the Holy One of God. But - even that 'knowing' would be tested....yet Jesus only forecasts that one of the twelve will be unfaithful....in fact, he refers to him as a devil....
John is writing after the fact, so lets us know it is Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot, who was one of the Twelve, who was going to betray Jesus.
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